Best Google Shopping Review Aggregators

The stars that display in Google Organic are almost always product reviews. This post will cover how to get product reviews on both organic and Google Shopping. If you own an ecommerce company, this article is for you. Even if you’re a service-based company, you can still benefit from reading this post. Those that have questions on how to get stars in Google Organic & Google Shopping will find everything that they need to get started. If you would rather jump straight into Google Shopping reviews for your products and services, use the table below to sample some of the Product Reviews Aggregators that can be found out there;

Approved Google Shopping Review Aggregators

Company

Starting Monthly Fee

Our Deal

Accumulated Ratings

Get it Now!

Shopper Approved

$99

$79

2000

Verified Reviews

$99

Ask for a discount

400

Yotpo

$400

$400

Request

Trust Pilot

$299

$299

300

What are Star Ratings?

We have previously written an article in which we define Google Star Ratings and explain how you can get them. Needless to say here that Star Ratings are a review system that assigns between one and five stars to a product or service based on how it has been reviewed by previous customers. The golden stars, as we have already noted, display in Google Search results. They have the effect of instilling confidence in the buying public, by showing people that their peers have already tried out and liked a particular product or service.

As a nation of non-stop consuming, reviews have become a big part of the consumer life cycle! The public likes to have the assurance that comes from knowing that other people have had good experiences with a product or service. Or, on the flip-side, we will avoid a product if it gets nasty reviews. That said, if negative reviews are handled properly, even these can work to your advantage.

It’s important to note that product review stars are different than seller ratings. Product review stars; you guessed it, pertain to the products themselves while the other type refer to the companies as a whole. A product review is typically something like “This product is high quality and it works as expected” while a seller review may be something like “This company had fast shipping and great customer service.”

FOR ECOMMERCE SITES

If you are an ecommerce site, how do you go about obtaining those all-important stars on an organic level and on Google Shopping PLA (Product Listing Ads)?

CMS based reviewing is not adequate

Sometimes a CMS like Shopify or WordPress (Woocommerce) will have a system in place where your customers can come back to your website and leave a product review. The problem is that most people are just not bothered with leaving reviews. Using the CMS default option also isn’t fully automated the way Amazon and Ebay’s review systems are. While your CMS may generate organic product reviews, they will NOT go into Google Shopping PLAs.

3rd Party review aggregators

As of 10/3/2016 Google has given licenses to 13 third party review aggregators that can push your product reviews into Google Shopping. We have already given you, at the top, a table that shows some of these companies. These are the ones that we recommend to our readers, based on our own experience using them.

In order to display product ratings on Google.com, your product (one product) must have at least 3 reviews. Your store must have 50 reviews combined spanning all products in order to get your stars to show.

Best 3rd Party Review Syndication Networks

Below are reviews of some of the best review syndication networks that can be found out there. We have already given some of them in the table at the top of this article. We highly recommend using a company that is licensed by Google for BOTH Seller Ratings and Product Reviews

Shopper Approved

Offering both merchant and product reviews, Shopper Approved displays star reviews in your Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) as well as in Google Adwords ads. This company stands out because it’s the fastest growing Google Authorized 3rd Party Product Review Aggregator based in the United States. Not only can users syndicate their product reviews to Google displaying 5-Star Ratings in their PLAs, users can also syndicate existing Product Reviews they’ve already collected by importing existing reviews via CSV.

Pricing

Free trials are available but plans start at just about a 99 bucks a month, making this an affordable option just like Verified Reviews:

$99/mo: Up to 900 accumulated ratings and reviews (this is the normal pricing if you go straight to SA’s website)

$199/mo: Up to 2,000 accumulated ratings and reviews

$399/mo: Up to 5,000 accumulated ratings and reviews

$599/mo: Up to 10,000 accumulated ratings and reviews.

The beauty of Shopper Approved is that it’s designed to work with any business, whether you sell online products or services, local products and services, or both. Users are put in touch with collection tools, management systems and distribution channels to help make their business more successful – all with no contracts. You can even collect reviews in private before you display them.

Verified Reviews

Update: Before signing up with Verified Reviews, make sure to ask them if the plans include both Seller Ratings for Adwords and Google Shopping (PLAs) ratings.

Verified Reviews helps you manage your e-reputation, seller ratings, rich snippets, and product reviews, all in an effort to increase sales. A free trial is available. With this plan, both ecommerce and service based companies can:

Show stars in your Product Listing Ads (PLA)

Integrate rich snippets

Improve your product catalog

Develop your network

Foster cross-channel customer feedback

Improve your multichannel offers

Enjoy greater visibility of your physical stores.

With six plans, Verified Reviews has the most comprehensive offerings of all the above. Plans start at just $99, so it’s definitely one of the more affordable options out there. The only drawback (a big drawback) I see with Verified Reviews is you cannot embed your reviews onto your site unless you have the $259/mo Platinum Plan. Choose from the following plans outlined here:

Silver ($99/mo): 400 orders per month

Gold ($159/mo): 1,000 orders per month

Platinum ($259/mo): 2,000 orders per month

Diamond ($619/mo): 6,000 orders per month

Ultimate ($1,299/mo): 15,000 orders per month

Infinite: Custom pricing and features

Yotpo.com

Yotpo promises a lot of stuff including top search results with SEO tools that drive quality traffic to your website. Through Inline technology, users can help you create thousands of new keywords, encourage more qualified traffic and maximize fresh content – all leading to big-time growth in organic traffic. With Rich Snippets, you can also ensure your store gets high SERPs thanks to reviews and ratings optimized for organic search results, displaying ratings in shopper comparisons to other sellers.

We get a lot of people on live chat who tell us they are paying about $400/mo for Yotpo. There are many plans to choose from:

Check out and compare all the Yotpo plans here. You can get a free demo on Pro, Powerhouse, and Visual Marketing. For the purposes of this blog post, you will need their Powerhouse Plan to push your product reviews into Google Shopping (PLAs).

Yotpo’s strength is that it’s a complete content marketing solution for businesses that sell products or services online, relying on real-time data and proprietary algorithms to determine the unique needs of each business. Then, it assigns specific tools for those businesses to help get customers to generate original content as part of online product reviews.

Trustpilot.com

This customer review platform was built to help instill trust in the end client, focusing on transparency to not only build confidence but retain it as well. You get the tools you need to collect reviews, get new customers, foster relationships, and extend your customer reach. It features some stiff competition from Shopper Approved and Power Reviews, but holds its own pretty well.

The platform itself is very user friendly and visually appealing. Standard options include search engine ratings, review monitoring, integration capabilities, and social sharing. Your favorite feature will likely be the TrustBox feature which allows you to configure widgets to embed on your website. Reviews posted by your customers may appear in any one of the following:

Google’s normal organic search results

Google Shopping Merchant Reviews

Google AdWords Merchant Reviews

Haggle for a better price

If you’re deciding to get Trust Pilot, remember to price haggle! They will drop their expensive pricing especially for a small business. Trustpilot has three plans for ecommerce and service businesses:

Lite: $599/mo (TP has now hidden this price from their pricing page) An entry level tool if you’re just looking to boost customer satisfaction. With this, you can collect and display reviews and improve ad ROI

Pro: Their most popular plan, geared to growing companies who want to drive traffic and increase conversions. Allows users to improve website conversion rates, make data-driven decisions, boost social media visibility

Enterprise: For companies requiring added data protection and enterprise-level account management. Includes all benefits of the Pro plan plus comprehensive customization and account management, with ability to integrate with in-house business tools.

PowerReviews.com

http://www.powerreviews.com/
PowerReviews works with about 1,000 global brands and retailers to generate reviews designed to drive traffic, boost sales, and create actionable insights so that shoppers are able to find your products. Many companies like PowerReviews because it can help convert more prospects and elevate online sales, while collecting monthly reviews through customizable designs, category templates and enhanced support. How many monthly reviews you collect will depend on the plan you select.

Pricing

Plans start at $399 per month. HOWEVER, syndication of your reviews into Google Shopping start at the $699/mo Business Plan.

Standard ($399/mo): This is the plan to choose if you simply want to grow your content and inbound traffic with ratings and reviews. This plan features Customizable Design, Google Product Ratings, and Inline SEO, with the ability to collect up to 75 monthly reviews.

Business ($699/mo): Collect up to 250 monthly reviews. This plan includes everything above plus Higher Limits, Category Templates, Daily Content Exports, and Syndication. Worth mentioning is that Syndication comes standard for retailers but is an extra cost for brands.

Custom: This is their most comprehensive plan with extra features and enhanced support, with the ability to collect a custom amount of monthly reviews. With this plan, you get everything in the Business plan plus Higher Limits, Enhanced Support, Customization via API, Additional Features and Professional Services. Call for pricing.

All of the above product review companies offer product reviews that will populate in Google Organic and Google Shopping. The one you choose will depend largely on your budget, needs and goals.

Note, however: sometimes a CMS like Shopify will have a 3rd party plugin, but if you ever change companies, you’ll probably lose your reviews too. In this case, it’s probably best to have a 3rd party review software outside of the CMS. For example, WooCommerce by WordPress doesn’t work by default; you’ll need a programmer.

FOR SERVICE BASED SITES

If you have a service based site like ours, guess what? You can get product reviews for free since you’re not going to syndicate anything into Google Shopping. For example, accounting companies can create service pages like “tax preparation,” “book keeping,” “audits,” “accounting,” and “amending taxes.” Each of these service pages would act as their “product” reviews.

2) Change the numbers, change the Product Name, also put your own <img src=”#”>. Please don’t use my planetmarketing.com images. Here are the 3 types of stars you will need. Download then upload them into your CMS. Swap out the planetmarketing.com URLs with your own URLs.

3) Go here and enter your test code before putting it in your site: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/
This system is manual, but at least you don’t have to pay a company to get product reviews. If you can afford it, get one of the companies above to help you automate the feedback.

If you have any questions, please ask below in the comments or contact me via live chat. I’ll help you out.

Francisco is the owner of Planet Marketing. He has many years of experience online marketing and web development. In his spare time he enjoys writing about internet marketing and web development. He loves coaching people and has a few students.
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